Two Ships Passing
by Carmarthen
Summary: [Mostly book, some musical.] Five different worlds in which Javert and Valjean never met, and one where they did. There will be six short chapters when complete. Gen.
1. 1795 - Faverolles

**SUMMARY:** Five different times Javert and Valjean never met, and one time they did.

**CANON:** Book/musical fusion

**CHARACTERS:** Valjean, Javert, Eugène-François Vidocq, Bishop Myriel

**RATING:** K

**NOTES:** I realize that neither the AUs nor the canon quite qualify as "two ships passing" in the strict sense, but since the idea for this fic came out of that title, the title pretty much glommed on and I couldn't bring myself to change it.

The five AUs take place in separate universes.

* * *

**1795. Faverolles**

_He recognized the fact that he was not an innocent man unjustly punished. He admitted that he had committed an extreme and blameworthy act; that that loaf of bread would probably not have been refused to him had he asked for it; that, in any case, it would have been better to wait until he could get it through compassion or through work; that it is not an unanswerable argument to say, "Can one wait when one is hungry?"_

-Victor Hugo, _Les Misérables_, Volume I, Book Second, Chapter VII "The Interior of Despair"

* * *

It was late on a Sunday evening when a man crossed the Place de l'Église of Faverolles. He walked with his head down and shoulders slumped as if weary, his long hair fallen loose from his queue and shading his face, his cap pulled down low over his eyes.

In front of the grated window of the baker's shop he paused, looking in the window at the day-old bread, which would be given out to beggars soon enough if it did not sell. He knew the baker, Maubert Isabeau, a kind enough man, but a man who always had enough to eat; and he thought of his sister and the seven children waiting back at the cottage. Pierre was sick and had cried all day for food, but they had nothing in the house but a handful of beans and some thin broth from the carcass of a rabbit the man had shot the week before, all the while waiting for the shout of the gamekeeper and the sound of gendarmes come to clap him in irons.

Pierre would stop crying if he had bread, the man thought, but he had once again found no work. Was it right, that he, willing to work, could yet find no work, and so those who depended on him starved? Was it right that M. Isabeau should have so much, while he, Jean Valjean, and those who depended upon him had so little?

He regarded the bread again. He was a strong man. It would be an easy enough thing to thrust his fist through the grate, through the windowpane, to break it and clutch the bread to his breast and run.

And yet he thought of his sister's weary face. If he were caught, what would become of her? What would become of the seven children?

He shuddered, imagining the shackle around his ankle, the red cap upon his head. There were worse things than honest poverty.

Jean Valjean hesitated a moment longer, his belly cramping with hunger, imagining little Pierre's cries. But no: if he asked in the morning, surely M. Isabeau would give him the bread, or perhaps there would be some task he could perform in trade. Surely there would be work again soon. After all, it was very rare for someone to truly die of hunger, and if misery could be escaped through theft, there would be a great deal less misery.

No, in the morning he would knock on M. Isabeau's door, cap in hand, like an honest man

The sad figure of Jean Valjean moved on across the square, the moment of madness past. What he might have lost if he succumbed did not cross his mind: he was not a man of great imagination. But when he returned to the cottage and found Pierre sleeping peacefully, and Jeanne ladled for him a bowl of bean soup with a bit of bacon in it that she had begged from a neighbor, he knew he had chosen the right path. It was better to be an honest man.

Tomorrow there would surely be work.


	2. 1797 - Marseille

**1797. Marseille**

* * *

_Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband was in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the pale of society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it. He observed that society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,—those who attack it and those who guard it; he had no choice except between these two classes; at the same time, he was conscious of an indescribable foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity, complicated with an inexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians whence he was sprung. He entered the police; he succeeded there. At forty years of age he was an inspector._

-Victor Hugo, _Les Misérables_, Volume I, Book Fifth, Chapter V "Vague Flashes on the Horizon"

* * *

"Thief! My purse!" The other side of the street exploded into a flurry of activity as the well-dressed gentleman grabbed the collar of the ragged, struggling urchin who had just picked his pocket. "Police!"

Javert turned his coat collar up, bent his head down, and kept walking, no faster than before. It was best not to get involved. Sometimes the cops would pick up anyone who looked too poor, too suspicious, and a day cooling his heels in jail meant a day without loading work at the docks, and fifteen fewer sous to bring back to his mother.

Behind him he heard the heavy tramp of booted feet, and the urchin's indignant shrieks suddenly turned into sobs.

Javert was not surprised when a hand clapped down on his shoulder and the butt of a musket was shoved into his ribs. "Here, this one's probably an accomplice," the cop said, looking at Javert's face and grimacing. "Looks a questionable fellow, anyway."

"Bring him back to the station for questioning," said another, while Javert cursed inwardly. They would let him out in the morning, for he had done nothing, and had not even a centime in his pockets, but the lost wages would mean an empty belly for a day.

Javert spent the night in the cell in bitter contemplation. It cannot be said why this particular night in jail precipitated this decision in Javert's soul, save that it did: he had been seventeen years in the world and in that time had known little but distrust and blows. His mother was kind enough, when she was not buried in a bottle, but kindness meant little to Javert. It had never done him much good.

He knew what the cops saw when they looked at him: ragged dark hair, a heavy brow, a great deal of jaw, the eyes of a beast of prey, a mouth made for snarling. Perhaps they were right, and he could not be anything but a criminal, even if he did not know it yet.

Certainly he would never be welcomed into society.

He saw two paths before him, each straight as a ruler: the one, to become one of the men who defended society by arresting those who attacked it.

The other: to become in truth what they thought him to be.

The night after they released him from jail, the virgin thief stole his first purse. He and his mother dined on roast chicken and Bordeaux wine.

By twenty, Javert led a gang that ruled the back alleys of Marseille.

At twenty-two, he slit his first throat.


	3. 1800 - Toulon

**1800. Toulon**

* * *

_Towards the end of this fourth year Jean Valjean's turn to escape arrived. His comrades assisted him, as is the custom in that sad place. He escaped. He wandered for two days in the fields at liberty, if being at liberty is to be hunted, to turn the head every instant, to quake at the slightest noise, to be afraid of everything,—of a smoking roof, of a passing man, of a barking dog, of a galloping horse, of a striking clock, of the day because one can see, of the night because one cannot see, of the highway, of the path, of a bush, of sleep. On the evening of the second day he was captured. He had neither eaten nor slept for thirty-six hours._

-Victor Hugo, _Les Misérables_, Volume I, Book Second, Chapter VI "Jean Valjean"

* * *

In the fourth year of his sentence, Jean-le-Cric's chain-mate died of a lung-fever, coughing his life out on the next bench, every spasmodic movement jerking their shared chains so they chafed against Jean's skin. He ought to have been in the hospital, Jean thought, but he did not say so to the guards who took away the body in the morning, with as much respect as they would have shown a dead dog.

His new chain-mate was named Eugène. He was a bluff, blond fellow from Arras, some years younger than Jean himself, and everything that Jean was not: garrulous where Jean was silent, charming where Jean was sullen. He had sweet-talked one of the guards, lynx-eyed old Père Mathieu, who distrusted all the convicts, into transferring him out of Room Three for fear of his life. Now he was chained with Jean and permitted to labor. It was curious, though, that he had been afraid of the other convicts. Eugène made friends as naturally as breathing; the chief of their chain said to anyone who would listen that a man like Eugène did not belong in Toulon.

"I am innocent, you know," Eugène told Jean the first night. "My fellows only asked to use my cell to write; how was I to know they were forging pardons?"

Eight years' hard labor for forgery and another three for trying to escape during his transfer to Toulon. He was probably lying about his innocence, but everyone lied in Toulon: it mattered nothing to Jean.

"What are you in for?"

"I stole a loaf of bread," Jean said, slowly, "and broke a window."

Eugène's broad face was full of sympathy, and his brows lifted like question marks over his pale eyes. "You shouldn't be here, either, my friend," he said, clapping Jean on the shoulder.

Jean said nothing. It was the first time in four years that anyone had shown him sympathy. He could no longer weep. The only alternative was to rage, but he did not know where to direct his anger.

A day later, Jean woke in the the night to a hand on his shoulder and another clamped over his mouth. Eugène was leaning over him, and when he was certain Jean would not make a sound, he thrust a bundle of fabric at him and leaned close, whispering, "Wear these under your cassock, and wait for my signal."

It seemed unreal, like a dream, but Jean managed to work his way into the clothing, and cover it up again with his ragged uniform. There was a trick to dressing while in chains, and a greater trick to doing it quietly, but Jean had mastered both, and no one awoke.

His heart was in his throat all the next day. If he was caught, he should be beaten. But he might be beaten at any time: for insolence, for working too slowly, because a guard had a bad day. This was a chance at freedom, and he could not pass it by. Eugène said nothing to him, but worked by his side in silence.

When the time came at last, Jean obeyed without question, in a daze; he slipped his chains and threw off his cassock and ran for the docks, Eugène a step ahead of him. He followed him abroad the docked frigate Muiron; he kept silent as Eugène convinced the cook that they were new crew; he followed when Eugène jumped into a boat and took up an oar, as if he had been commanded to do so.

It was not until they were outside of the city in the quiet of the piney mountains that Jean-le-Cric spoke again: "I would have been free in a year," he said in a mournful voice, for now that the escape was done, the unthinking instinct of the caged wolf to flight had passed from him. Three days he had known Eugène, and in those three days his life turned upside-down! "What am I to do now? I cannot go to my sister, not as a wanted man."

Eugène slung an arm across his shoulders, companionably, and his expression was not without sympathy. "Stick with me, my friend Jean, and I will take care of you."

Jean bowed his head in acquiescence. What else could he do?

* * *

**HISTORICAL NOTE:**

Eugène-François Vidocq really did successfully escape from Toulon in March of 1800, although I have glossed over the details because I frankly find all of his prison escapes sort of incomprehensible (Vidocq was a wizard?). And Jean Valjean's first escape attempt was in 1800...so I mashed the two together. Someday I'd really love to see a longer story where Vidocq and Valjean interact at Toulon, since their sentences overlapped.


End file.
